by Michael Lion
He grunted and reached into the shirt. One of its buttons popped and skittered around on the frosty floor. He brought the piece out with two fingers, by the trigger guard. I said, again softly, “By the barrel, over your right shoulder.” He flipped it over and pushed it at me. I grabbed the butt and let the bottle neck bounce off his shoulder and shatter on the ground. I pulled him back a little farther than even he thought he could go and said, “I’m going to let you go, now. Don’t be stupid.”
He turned around and let me see how much he was sweating. “Relax,” I said calmly, “just answer some questions and you can go back to whatever you were doing for that cute little barmaid.” I looked all around the cooler, pulled a Budweiser from a carton, and gave it to him. He took it and popped the top. “Feel better?”
He nodded. “You a cop?” His voice was very soft and didn’t give anything away, like a mortician’s whisper.
I shook my head and played with the cylinder in the piece, a cheap little .38 snub. “I’m getting tired of people asking me that. No. And I got more problems than solutions right now. How much is Sonny T spotting you to look out for people like me?”
He had drained his beer, and the beads of sweat on his top lip disappeared. “S’cold in heah, cuz. You like talk ou’side?”
I pointed the pistol in the general direction of his groin and didn’t say anything until he got nervous. “How much?”
“Every day he come in, he give me a fifty.”
“How often does he come in?”
“Every day. ’Bout dis time.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
“’Bout a week.”
I nodded. I reached into my stash and flipped hundreds in front him. He looked at me with big distrust on his face. I said, “How many guys are in that back room?”
“Right now deah’s just Sonny an’ Mack,” he said, as I fanned five hundred dollars out in my hand and primped the bills until they were nice and even.
“Mack the guy you made eyes at when they went in?”
He nodded, a motion that sent hair and jowls in a lot of directions. “Dey jus’ sit back an’ talk story ’til da othah guys show.”
I handed him the five-hundred-dollar fan and said, “I understand you’re going to catch a little heat for this. Do you feel you’ve been adequately compensated for your trouble?”
He nodded half-heartedly, staring at the money.
“Now, when do these other boys show up?”
“’Bout anothah hour.”
I said, “Thanks. That door they went through locked?”
The violent nod again. “Always.”
“You got a knock they recognize?”
“Yeah.”
I made a motion with my hand, and he gave me the knock. I scrolled another hundred off the roll and said, “Once I’m in, I don’t care if a cannon goes off in that room and dancing girls start pouring out, you don’t bother checking in.” He took it and nodded. I got the impression he would only be employed at the Hula Tavern for about two more minutes.
I reached over and pulled the door open. An invisible river of warm air flooded in. He went out the back door and I headed for the bar, down the short hallway and through the swinging door. I gave the barmaid a look that sat her down, and knocked five sharp raps on the door, spaced well apart. A short wait while the barmaid stared at me in disbelief, and then the door opened so the bodyguard and I could get an eyeful of each other.
I could only see four inches of him but what I could see looked humorless. His face wasn’t very close to the opening because he couldn’t get it there—his chest was in the way.
When it wasn’t the barback’s mug he saw, he didn’t look surprised. He tried to look amused. He was a good six inches taller than me, and that made it an unpleasant look. I said, “I’ve got a little story for Sonny.”
The bodyguard stood there breathing.
“It’s a good story. Really.”
“Sonny don’t see nobody he don’t know,” the man finally said. He wanted to be tough. He should have kept his mouth shut. He sounded about as hard as a ripe tomato.
“Tell Sonny T I talked to a friend of his last night. Tell him it wasn’t me that did most of the talking.”
He gave me another semi-hard stare and then closed the door two inches so he could mumble something to Sonny. Sonny mumbled something back. The back of King Kong’s head nodded and he opened the door back to its four-inch limit.
“Sonny say fuck off,” he said. He smiled.
“You ever say anything Sonny doesn’t tell you to?” I asked. “You Sonny’s ears, too?”
More standing and breathing. He sounded like a cow with a head cold. I got tired of his act.
“Look, fatboy, you don’t impress me.” I let his eyes get big. “I got two words for Sonny T, and I want you to say them very clearly. You ready? Danny Ohana.”
Apparently he didn’t have to check with his boss to deal with that one. He drew the door wide and ushered me into the tiny back room. The Samoan’s .38 made a pitiful little bump in the small of my back. Mack frisked me lightly and took it from me. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.
Sonny T was seated behind a cheap card table in the center of the room, his back to a wall with a bunch of shelves that held bar supplies like napkins and ashtrays. His feet reminded me of an old lady’s—the flesh popped up just behind the toes of his loafers like two huge blisters. They were crossed daintily underneath the table. He smiled but didn’t say anything, and his teeth looked like someone had thrown them into his mouth from across the room. His hair was slicked back and plastered to his head so it reflected light.
The bodyguard and I walked shoulder-to-shoulder to the table, each trying to keep the other from getting behind. Sonny sat watching us through the smoke of a thin cigar and absent-mindedly shuffled a deck of cards. There were six chairs. “Relax, Mack. This is a little fish,” he said. He set the deck too far off to the side, like an ex-smoker putting a pack out of his sight to keep from getting distracted. “That’s a pretty heavy name to be throwing around, little haole. What do you know about the Ohana?”
“Nothing. I just knew it would prick up your ears. Fact is, I don’t give a good goddamn who they are, so long as they lead me where I need to go. So far they’ve led me here.”
I hadn’t said anything that interested him yet, and his face showed it. Mack stood next to him and tried to stare me down. “Well, long as you got this far, why don’t you have a seat?” he said, friendly as an Alabama prison guard, and motioned to the folding chair in front of me. I turned it around and sat down with my arms crossed lazily over the back. Mack sat down after I did. “Now, who was it you talked to? Said he was a friend of mine?”
“Yeah, but I figure a lot of people who don’t know much more than your name say that. It doesn’t mean much. Besides, what he told me was bullshit.”
“What’d he tell you?” He turned his bulk around and fished an ashtray off a shelf behind him, mashed the cigar into a little wad of tobacco.
“He said you were laying low because some guns you provided were used in an improper manner a little bit ago. I think that’s a crock.”
The worried look was coming across his face, but he was a good pressure player. “It’s true, the job on Danny doesn’t look good on my resume. But I deal in guns. You got that. I can’t very well be responsible for what happens once they leave me. In fact, it’s bad business for me to know.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. But what I really came here for was answers.”
“You got questions?”
“Yeah, like why a young lady named Li Nguyen was wandering all over Los Angeles wearing her own gravestone around her neck.”
Things happened very quickly after that. The room went dead silent for a long second, and then Mack’s hand dove inside his coat, leaving no question where it was going. About the same time he got his Beretta leveled at my chest, I caught a hoarse whisper from Sonny. “So you’re the guy,” he said. I w
as gripping the edge of the table with both hands and staring down the barrel of that piece like it was the throat of a wild animal.
“You finally showed that thing to the wrong person,” I said flatly, and then flipped up the card table and handed it to him.
Mack got off one round that punched through the tabletop way over my head. I put my shoulder to the fiberboard and pushed the both of them over the backs of their chairs. The table was now on top of Mack with its legs in the air, and Sonny T had squelched off to the side. He had cracked the back of his head on the shelving and was lying on his back looking dazed. Mack pushed the table off himself just in time for me to bring a heel down on his left knee. He screamed like a child and forgot about the pistol as both hands went to the leg. The balance point was just right to bring my other foot forward and destroy his face. He arched back against the wall choking on his own teeth and then lay perfectly still. I picked up the nine-millimeter and pointed it at the door. The barmaid’s head peeked around it and I yelled, “Out!”
Sonny T was lightly dabbing the back of his head and staring blankly at the blood that came away on his fingertips. He gazed at me and then over at Mack, whose nose and mouth looked like a single bloody hole in his head. It didn’t do much for Sonny’s nerves.
He started to roll forward on his palms in an effort to stand up, so I drew attention to the fact that I was the only one standing and that situation wasn’t going to change anytime soon. I pulled the automatic’s slide back far enough to make sure there was a live one in the chamber and let it snap forward. Sonny froze in a half-sit. “Just stay right there, motherfucker. I came here to tell you a story and you’re going to sit right there on your fucking ass and listen. Get comfortable.”
He sagged against the wall like a bag of ballast and wheezed quietly. “I should’ve fuckin’ known it was you. Shit,” he said almost to himself. “Motherfucker. How’d he show up here? Fuckin’ faggot haole.”
“Yeah, I caught that little bit about me right before I put your boyfriend here to sleep. It worries me some but we’ll get to it later. Believe me.” I picked up the chair I had been sitting in before Mack got stupid. I put it down over Sonny’s legs so the support bar pinned his fat ankles and then sat in it heavily.
“Hey, shithead! There’s no need for that!” he said, trying in vain to sit up and grab the chair. He probably could have done it sixty pounds ago.
I was exasperated. “Are you blind, man? Quit talking like you’re the one holding the gun. It makes me nervous. I don’t like being nervous. I drop things and have accidents.” I rested the Beretta’s muzzle on his kneecap. “So do other people.”
“Okay, okay, okay! Christ, move that thing.”
I ignored the request and said, “You already figured out all by yourself that I’m not from around here. I got here two nights ago and don’t care if I ever see this fucking place again. I’m from Los Angeles. I love that place. Everything I’ve ever loved or hated is there, and right now I miss it so much I’d even like to see some of my ex-girlfriends.
“It was two weeks ago or so that I was leading a relatively happy life. Then a friend came and asked me to do a favor for her. At first I thought she was asking as a friend. Now I know she was lying, lying to protect me. She asked me to do it because she couldn’t call the cops and needed somebody who wouldn’t get wise to what was up. The favor was to rescue her sister from her own stupid self. I did that, or thought I did. Suddenly a bunch of assholes like you are ghosting me and making life in general pretty uncomfortable. Then guess what happens?”
Sonny knew he was in it for the long haul. He just wheezed and let me keep going.
“That’s right, bodies. Bodies fucking everywhere, you dig? I don’t think anything about it myself. I sell what I know to the fuzz and I’m partying. Done. Finito. Then a big guy with hard fists shows up at a place he shouldn’t have been and, more importantly, shouldn’t have known I was at, and gets his brains removed by a girl who I used to hate but now, you understand, am sort of fond of. I called her right before I came over to see you and guess what? I talked to yet another asshole who wants something I’ve got. And here’s the kicker: I still don’t know what it is!”
Sonny winced as I pressed the gun’s barrel into his kneecap.
“All I know is, it’s important. To a lot of people. And now, if I give it up, she and I and probably a few other people are going to get killed, and that would be particularly ugly. You uncomfortable?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. The friend that came to me and asked me to help her out was named Li Nguyen. Her sister had been living under a false name, Naomi, and working as a call girl on a trim-cruiser called the Azure Mosaic.”
Sonny tried to hide it, but the name made his eyes squirm around in their sockets. He sucked in his bottom lip and chewed on it while he stared at the floor next to his left hand.
“You might know it’s run by a royal bitch named Cynthia Dazhai Ming. Two of the bodies I mentioned earlier were from her little brood. One was Song Ti, Li’s sister. The other one was the girlfriend of a shitball lawyer named Parenti. So I went to his office and said please and thank you and pretty much minded my manners and he went ahead and lied to me. He’s here somewhere and I’m looking for him and I have a feeling you know where he is. And if you don’t, I’ve got some other thoughts on the matter.”
Sonny cocked a fat eyebrow at me. He was good at staying quiet.
“This kid claiming to be a friend of yours who came sniffing around for a hundred bucks said you sold those guns to Tran Nguyen.” I watched him carefully. He was about ready to bust at the seams. “He said you didn’t recognize Tran because he was supposed to have died a while ago with his two sisters. I’ve got a little problem with that theory.”
I suddenly stood up and kicked the chair away. Before Sonny could react, I grabbed one of his hands and bent the ring finger back. He grunted and arched but I got a foot on his stomach to keep him from slithering away. I continued calmly.
“I really liked that little girl, Sonny. She was beautiful, you know? Innocent. You could treat her like garbage and she’d just smile and force you to slink away from her light. I think I loved her for a while.” Sonny was starting to sweat. I leaned over until we were looking into each other’s eyes, until I could smell him and I could hate him with every sense. “They stuffed her under my bed, Sonny. Under my fucking bed. They put a bullet in her forehead and bent her in two.” I shut my eyes tight and bent the finger back until it snapped.
Sonny squealed. “Jesus fucking CHRIST!”
I chased the image of Li’s terrified face, those big brown eyes, whose last vision was a muzzle flash, out of my mind by screaming, “Shut UP!” into Sonny’s face. I still had his finger in a death grip. He was whimpering and waiting for me to start whipping him around the room with it. Instead, I took several deep breaths and laid it out. “You know shit, Sonny. If you didn’t, you’d be dead. So I’m going to make you a deal. I don’t have much to deal with because money just can’t mean that much to you, at least not any amount I can come up with. And I have this theory.”
The violence felt good. My blood was running like acid, and it was everything I could do not to just execute him. “I believe the world is divided into two kinds of people,” I continued. “One kind understands money and the other kind understands pain. Guess which one I think you are.”
His eyes were trying to look angry and mean but the pain was too intense to be masked. I took hold of the next finger over. Sonny started to cry and lash out incoherently. “I’m gonna fuckin’ paste you, faggot! Just wait,” he said heavily, drooling on his rumpled tie, “just fucking wait! There’s no place far enough away! They’ll never find most of you!”
“Let me tell you something, Sonny,” I said almost passively. “As you sit here yanking my dick, there’s a hitman sitting in a posh Los Angeles hotel room that I paid for, sipping booze that I paid for, with nothing to pass the time but rape an innocent girl that I owe
my life to. So threaten me some more, you fat prick. Ask me again how much I care about what you’re going to do to me.”
His eyes bobbled back and forth between mine and found no fear, no remorse, and finally realized he was dealing with a man fueled purely by rage. I could feel my voice changing wildly, rising and falling, rushing and then calming down. I felt balanced on the edge of sanity, with Sonny tipping me back and forth.
“Now, I haven’t told you the deal yet,” I continued, trying to calm down, “so don’t jump the gun. First, you start telling me interesting things about my situation. Just keep going until I tell you to stop. Every time you tell me something I think is full of shit, I break a finger. If I run out of fingers, I start putting bullets in joints, starting with your right shoulder. Is this all very clear? Just nod.”
He clamped his jaws and nodded. His face was red through his tan, and sweat had soaked his hair and collar.
“Good,” I said, getting a reassuring grip on the fresh finger. “Sing.”
“All I know is that Cynthia and her fuckin’ whore ship are in some big hock to the Ohana,” he said through heavy breaths. “She doesn’t like paying dock rights to the local mob. Honolulu is a big port for her, but the boys want fifty percent of the action. That’s a nasty chunk when you’re also payin’ for local pigs to look the other way. And now the mainland is on her case, too, which means she’s gonna be spending even more time in other ports, so the mob put on the cash screws.”
“Keep going.”
His eyes were fully concentrated on my fist, the one holding the good finger. He didn’t blink while he talked. “So that’s it, punk. You wanted what I knew.” He sucked air through his teeth.
I tightened on the finger. “Why did Danny Ohana get clipped?”
“I don’t know, man, Jesus! Like your little pigeon said, I didn’t even recognize Tran when he came to me—”
I yanked. It was a clean snap, and an even cleaner scream. While he was still blind with hurt I grabbed his thumb, ready for the next stupid move. “You know what, Sonny? I think that last little bit was a fib.”
